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| Sunday, 6 February 2005 |
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A letter to a child survivor : You will be a stronger person by Lionel Wijesiri Dear Child, The thunderous tsunami that rocked the whole country a month ago has shattered your life too. It is too much of a burden for a 12-year kid like you. I can hear your voice vibrating "Why did they have to go?"
While our Government prepares itself for the reconstruction, we, the common people of the country, are hearing your heartbreak while holding your hands and hugging you from afar. We want you to know that it will be very bad for a little while, but it will get better as time moves on. What happened on December 26, last year was a national tragedy. Everyone saw it, everyone hurt, everyone grieved, and everyone wanted to help. But that would not make it any easier for you. Our nation mourns with you, for itself and for you. But yours is also a personal loss that is separate from this national tragedy. I hope this letter will bring you some comfort now or in the future, when you are strong enough to read it. We want to prepare you for what's to come and to help you deal with this burden you never asked to bear. Your father and mother were innocent. They were just travelling in train to pick you up from your Grandma's house in Matara. Yet some 'Power' decided to make their everyday lives - and yours - a battlefield. The 24-hour news coverage has now toned down, but it has already blinded you. The memory will be there for weeks, months and years to follow and will pop up when you least expect it. You will be watching television and then, suddenly, there will be those pictures - the devastation and the people running. For other people watching, this will all be something called 'history.' To you, it's your devastated life. Your imagination might carry you to new and scary depths and unspeakable images. You will be afraid to ask what happened because the answers might be worse than what you imagined. You'll torture yourself wondering if they felt pain, if they suffered, if they knew what was happening. You may have strange dreams or nightmares about your mother and father being alive somehow, trapped in a pocket of the wreckage of a building or stranded or lost in some remote location in the deep sea. They may call to you in your dream to come find them. You will wake up with such hope and determination, only to have the clouds of reality gather and rain fresh tears of sadness on your face. These dreams are your subconscious trying to make sense out of what your conscious self already knows. Everyone you know will cry fresh tears when they see you. People will try to feed you even though you know it all tastes like nothing. They want to know what you think, what you feel and what you need. But you really don't know. You may not know for a very long time. And it will be an even longer amount of time before you can imagine your life without your mother and father. Some people, working through their own grief, will want to talk to you about the catastrophe, the aftermath, the rescue and recovery, or the actions that will be taken by our nation. Others will whisper as you walk by, "Her father was killed in the tsunami wave," or "Her mother was in the train that crashed into the sea with the tsunami wave," or "Her father died after saving 3 children from the tsunami wave". This new identity might be difficult for you. Sometimes you will want to say to the people who whisper, "Yes, that was my father. That was my mother. I am so proud of them." But sometimes you will want to fade into the background, wanting to anonymously grieve in your own way, in your own time, without an audience. When those who loved your mother or father talk with you, cry with you, or even scream with frustration and the unfairness of it, you don't have to make sense of it all. Grief is a weird and winding path with no real destination and lots of switchbacks. Look on grief as a journey full of rest stops, enlightening sites and potholes of differing depths of rage, sadness and despair. Just realise that you won't be staying forever at one stop. You will eventually move on to the next. And the path will become smoother, but it may never come to an end. Ask the people who love you and who knew and loved your mother or father to help you remember the way they lived not the way they died. You need stories about your mother or father from their friends, co-workers and your family. These stories will keep your mother and father alive and real in your heart and mind for the rest of your life. The stories will help you make decisions about your life help you become the person you were meant to be. Just as a stronger nation will rise out of the grisly rubbles and remains of buildings, so will you be a stronger person. The events of last month will shape your life in many different ways. You can still believe in the future. We promise you that much. Please know that we are with you holding you in our hearts and in our minds until we die. That's another promise. And we really mean it. (Adapted from a letter written by Kathie Scober to a young survivor of a terrorist attack. Kathie herself lost her father in a National tragedy. He was the commander of the Space shuttle Challenger, which exploded in 13 seconds after airborne in 1986). |
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Yours is a small voice in a crashing storm of questions arising from
what some people say as "an act of God." But no answers will
bring you comfort. And no answers will bring you closer to understanding,
save one: Your father and mother will not come back.
